Joe was telling me about some focus groups of genuine independent voters he'd sat in on yesterday. He's already blogged it at Swampland, here, and I recommend you read the whole thing. Most fascinating findings to me are summed up in these two grafs:

"Change" as a theme is over. Too vague. And Obama's rhetoric has begun to seriously cut against him. "No more oratory," one woman said. "Give us details." (There may be a racial component to this, by the way, as some white people associate soaring oratory with African-American leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson.)

What do they want? Given a list of 31 personal attributes the next President might have and asked to pick the eight most important, "Accountability" finished highest with 13 votes, next was "Someone I can trust" with 12, "honest and ethical" was third with 11. "Agrees with me on the issues" got one vote. They didn't care if the candidate was a Washington insider or outsider. "A dynamic and charismatic leader" got two votes...

I doubt I'd ever have thoughto f this on my own, but now that it's been laid before me I think it makes a lot of sense. The unaccountability of the Bush gang in a thousand-and-one ways has been horrendous and has evidently been noticed by people at large. I think it's a great theme.

The attacks ads of the last month have done in "change" and Obama's charisma. It does seem apparent now that he needs to tack to a somewhat different course, stay ahead of the negative ads, throw the other side a curve.

Joe also told me that McCain's negative ads were more effective than Obama's. No surprise there. But read the post. Klein's advice seems sound to me.